A Long-Ago Interview with Dave Van Ronk About the Blues

Dave Van Ronk, who was known as the Mayor of MacDougal Street, would have been eighty today. I met the monumental figure of the nineteen-sixties Greenwich Village folk scene in 2000, at Caffe Vivaldi, on Jones Street. It was his usual spot. (Nowadays, Dave Van Ronk Street is right around the corner, though the block wasn’t named in the musician’s honor until 2004, two years after his death.) “If you don’t show up,” Van Ronk said on the telephone, “don’t worry about it. I’ll be there anyway.” Van Ronk’s voice sounded like a swarm of bees. Because I confused Jones Street on the West Side for Great Jones on the East, I arrived almost an hour late. When the cab pulled up, Van Ronk was still there. He was wearing a planter’s hat, a Hawaiian shirt, and a pair of eyeglasses with thick, black frames. Less than an inch of iced coffee was left in his tall glass mug. But Van Ronk was generous enough to order another. We talked about blues and art.